The number and variety of wireless terminal devices, such as mobile telephones, wireless-enabled laptop computers and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) with wireless communication capabilities, self-service kiosks and two-way pagers are rapidly increasing. Software applications which run on these devices increase their utility. For example, a mobile phone may include an application which retrieves the weather for a range of cities, or a PDA may include an application that allows a user to shop for groceries. These software applications take advantage of wireless connectivity to a data network (such as the Internet) in order to provide timely and useful services to users.
A typical wireless application may include more than twenty separate tasks (or “actions”) each involving several steps. Traditionally, software developers have had to manually create action codes to perform each required task, i.e. programmers have had to manually code all of the steps, procedures and functions needed to perform the task. This prior-art approach is time-consuming and furthermore requires significant time and effort to debug the code for minor misspellings, syntax errors, problematic variable definitions or other logical inconsistencies. As programmers end up devoting time and energy to coding mechanics and syntax, they inevitably do not concentrate fully on the design and programming of the workflow of the task, i.e. the conceptual steps needed to perform the task.
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to provide a method and system for assisted visual development of workflow for application tasks.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.